disease, metabolic disease, dementia and depression. More recent
research shows that the steady stress of urban living changes the brain
in ways that can increase our odds of schizophrenia, anxiety and
mood disorders.
When it was my turn to wander through the forest for fifteen
minutes, I was happy to break free from the wires. The loud pulse of
cicadas echoed through the woods. Light filtered gently through the
beeches and Japanese horse chestnuts and the earth smelled like good
damp dirt. An elderly couple ambled by, assisted by walking sticks
and a bear bell. I was briefly mesmerized by a yellow butterfly. I
could see why Juniko, a leafy network of trails and lakes, is a
candidate for the country’s next forest therapy station. Local and park
officials are seeking the designation because where there’s forest
therapy, there are tourists and their yen. Miyazaki may have a
mystical side, but what drives him is more data. It’s a convenient
arrangement.
The Japanese work on physiology and the brain takes advantage of
new tools of brain science, but it builds on decades of psych-talk
about the health benefits of being in nature. Miyazaki wasn’t the first
to record physical stress recovery in nature. A young psychologist
named Roger Ulrich was curious why so many Michigan drivers
chose to go out of their way to take a tree-lined roadway to the mall.
In 1986, using the expensive and cumbersome equipment of the time,
he hooked up an electroencephalograph (EEG) unit to the heads of
healthy volunteers while they viewed slides of nature scenes or
utilitarian urban buildings. The subjects assigned to nature showed
higher alpha wave activity, a wavelength associated with relaxation,
meditation and increased serotonin. In another experiment, he
stressed out 120 students by showing them movies of bloody
accidents in a woodworking shop. He knew they were distressed
because he measured their sympathetic nervous activity—the sweat
glands on their skin, their heart rates and their blood pressure.